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The Quality of Food Advertised to Children
If you have kids, chances are they watch Nickelodeon: the cable channel's programs account for 47 out of the 50 top children's shows on television today. Those programs reach into movies, books, magazines, and websites, while the characters in those programs are used to market food products and are made into collectible toys.

Added sugars may affect heart health risk factors in children
Last week I shared a meta-analysis that concluded that higher levels of sugar intake in an adult's diet were "strongly associated with higher triglycerides, total as well as LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol), and blood pressure." While that study was interested intotal sugars and not strictly added sugars, this week's study suggests that those effects are not limited to adults.

Fast Food Kids' Meals
Just as in the United States, kids in Australia eat a lot of fast food - one recent study estimates that 25% of school children in Australia eat fast food at least once a week, with that number increasing to 43% in adolescents. That's actually lower than in the United States, where about 30% of high school age kids eat fast food more than three times a week.

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Salty Foods and Overweight Kids

Our daily sodium intake, in the developed countries, averages over 6000 milligrams of sodium per day. That's almost three times as much as the more reasonable recommendation of 2400 milligrams per day. With all that salt, there's also a well-documented link between salt intake and fluid intake in adults. (Certainly it makes sense: eat something salty, you get thirsty, you drink a beverage of some kind.)

We also know that sugary beverages, even though they contain calories, don't fill you up the way actual food does, and may actually lead you to eat more later than if you ate the same number of calories in food (Bite 11/07/07). Kids get a lot of their calories from those sweetened beverages. Researchers in the United Kingdom noted these two facts and asked themselves, "Could this high salt intake be linked to children's high sugared-drink intake - and therefore be a factor in children's overweight and obesity?" (Hypertension 2008(3);51:629-634)

To assess this possible link between salt intake and sugared-drink intake
in children, the researchers made use of data from a large-scale, cross-sectional
study (a study that is a "snapshot" of a single time period)
of children's dietary and exercise habits during a normal week in the child's
life. Over 1600 children ranging in age from 4 to 18 years kept a detailed
dietary record (or their parents did) of everything they ate and drank
in one week. They also kept track of their amount and types of exercise.

The results of the researcher's analyses are grouped by age and gender.
Generally speaking, both boys and girls got about one-third of their total
daily fluid intake from sugared soft drinks - girls slightly less than
boys. When the scientists correlated this sugared soft drink consumption
with the amount of salt in the children's diets, they found a "highly
significant" connection between salt intake and sugared soft drink
intake. So much, they found, that they predicted that cutting 1000 milligrams
of salt per day from a child's diet would reduce a child's intake of sugared
soft drinks by about 2 drinks per week (assuming the typical drink is about
250 grams of liquid), which is about 244 calories per week for each child.
Cutting their salt intake in half could lead to an even larger reduction
in the average number of calories each child consumes per week.

What this means for you

This doesn't necessarily mean that less salt will automatically lead
to fewer calories - it simply means that less salt in a child's diet will
mean that a child drinks less fluids overall, and therefore drinks less
sugared soft drinks. Reducing the amount of salt in your family's diet
is one way to help your child drink fewer soft drinks, but the best way
is still to simply give them water instead.